Barrow commissioners put moratorium on new personal care homes

Merritt Melancon

Wednesday

Nov 23, 2011 at 4:05 PM

The Barrow County Commission on Tuesday enacted a six-month moratorium on licenses for new personal care homes, citing a need for time to rewrite the county’s zoning code that allows care facilities in residential neighborhoods.

“I personally realize that this unified development code that we have needs to be looked at, and it needs to be looked at hard,” said District 6 Commissioner Ben Hendrix. “And this board possibly needs to make some changes to it. This moratorium, if it passes, will give us the ability to do that.”

Currently, the county’s zoning codes allow property owners to open personal care homes in single-family houses as long they secure a special-use permit from the commission.

In many cases, commissioners have voted to approve special-use permits to allow the homes, over the opposition of other subdivision residents, because they have no legal grounds to deny permits to property owners.

On Tuesday, commissioners also had to revisit two special-use permit applications for personal care homes that they had denied over the summer because the applicants had sued the county.

The applicants had argued that commissioners ruled against them without having any legal basis for their decision.

Commissioners approved both applications Tuesday despite strong opposition from a crowd of more than 50 residents of Chateau Forest, the subdivision near Hoschton where one of the personal care homes will be located. Both decisions split the commission, with Commission Chairman Danny Yearwood breaking the tie to approve the special-use permits.

“What took place here tonight means our covenants are trash,” said Jacob Hazan, one Chateau Forest resident. “Our covenants (which prohibit home-based businesses) aren’t worth anything. ... Mr. Yearwood, with his deciding vote, went against the opinion and desire for 99 percent of the people in subdivision. Nice going, commissioner.”

Most the residents who spoke against the proposed personal care home in Chateau Forest cited concerns about increased traffic and whether the house’s septic tank can handle effluent from two residents who would live there.

No one, except for Hendrix, alluded to the recent case of Marlo Kenneth Yarbrough, a Bethlehem personal care home operator who allegedly abandoned four of his mentally ill charges in an empty rental house in Winder at the beginning of November.

Yarbrough is accused of dumping the residents after Barrow County code enforcement officials threatened to shut down the pair of unlicensed care homes run by Yarbrough, his wife and his sister-in-law.

Yarbrough has been charged with exploiting disabled adults and reckless conduct, and his wife and sister-in-law have been charged with being party to the crime of exploiting disabled adults.

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